My journey into this carbon form began in 1972, the same year the Club of Rome published “The Limits to Growth”, the first alarming global report on the state of the planet and the economy, opening humanity’s eyes to our Earth’s boundaries. I was born into that awakening time, the daughter of an environmentalist and a primary school teacher, both from farming families, and the seeds of care for the Earth were planted in me early on.
My studies in agriculture, landscape design, and land management deepened my love for the living world. By the late 1990s, while working on the organic certification of my family’s farm, I began to feel firsthand the impact of soil depletion and the pain of the land under intensive agricultural systems. That experience opened my eyes and heart to the urgency of regeneration. During my PhD research on Land Restoration in the early 2000s, my focus on soil impoverishment expanded toward the climate. I realised that climate change was unfolding steadily in line with scientific modelling, and that our greatest task was to protect and restore ecosystems as sanctuaries of balance and beauty. Education and communication then became my focus, and I began working as an environmental communicator and educator.
For my 39th birthday in April 2011, I travelled around Scotland for a month and attended an Experience Week at the Findhorn Foundation, notknowing that this place would one day become my home. I fell deeply in love with the country.
At that time, I was running an environmental school in Bologna for families and vulnerable teenagers, working as a journalist and event manager in food and natural sciences, and offering consultancy in agri-food ecology and EU projects. Yet something called me back to the area so deeply that, despite my resistance, Life had already decided for me.
On the 29th of September 2011, I moved here permanently. It felt like stepping into the life I had always dreamed of but never dared to claim. I soon began facilitating Nature Connection workshops and Experience Week programmes, and by 2014 I launched the first Building Resilience investigation at the Park, joining the Findhorn Foundation Assets Department for a year and a half. My findings, rooted in circular economy and the Natural Step principles, highlighted uncomfortable but necessary shifts in food provision and energy optimisation to ensure long-term resilience. I now feel those seeds are finding more fertile ground.
The Building Resilience project became a springboard for the next chapter of my work. Over the following eight years, I collaborated with Scottish Government public bodies on the Circular Economy Strategy. I ran a climate consultancy that allowed me to mentor nearly one hundred climate innovation start-ups at the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation (ECCI), within the EU’s Climate-KIC platform. I also co-founded Green Grow, a multi-award-winning mushroom foods company. The venture met its end through the convergence of the pandemic and Brexit, just after we had made significant and, at the time, unusable investments in marketing.
Since then, I have formally trained as a plant-based nutrition coach, supporting cancer patients in their dietary transitions through a gift economy model. I currently assist UK farmers in shifting from feedstock to compassionate and sustainable agriculture with the charity StockFree Farming in Aberdeen, and I serve as Operations, Communications, and Fundraising Manager for the Caring Community Circle (CCC).
As Carbon Strategy Director at PET, I hold no fixed vision yet, only the intention to let it emerge organically through cooperation and listening. I have learned from missteps that resilience and regeneration are not forms of knowledge to be taught but living experience to be co-created and experienced. My mission is to help cultivate a shared strategy grounded in custodianship and our common purpose: to live and act within the generous limits of our biosphere.
I personally envision for the Earth a regenerative future where conscious, measurable climate action lives in harmony with caring communities, social inclusion, and ecological integrity, all thriving together in service to all Creation. Every ecosystem, like every person, carries a unique signature within this carbon-based life on Earth. Only together can we play harmoniously in Gaia’s great orchestra, our differences joining hands in a symphony of renewal. Guided by the principles of Doughnut Economics and the Wellbeing Economy, I believe I will serve at PET in continuing the legacy of the Findhorn community as a living laboratory: a beacon of what is possible when human and ecological communities flourish side by side, restoring the
